Libyan embassy staff expelled from UK

Britain expelled the remaining staff of the Libyan embassy as it granted
political recognition to the Libyan opposition in the latest attempt to
strike a telling blow against Col Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

Amid increasingly frantic diplomatic moves five months into a bombing campaign against the Libyan dictatorship, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said Britain could free up frozen funds for the Libyan opposition.

He said the opposition National Transitional Council (NTC) would be invited to send a diplomatic envoy to take over the Libyan People’s Bureau in Knightsbridge.

"The Prime Minister and I have decided that the United Kingdom recognises and will deal with the National Transitional Council as the sole governmental authority in Libya," Mr Hague said.

"In line with that decision we summoned the Libyan chargé d’affaires to the Foreign Office today and informed him that he and the other regime diplomats must leave the UK.

"We no longer recognise them as representatives of the Libyan government." The announcement added to concerns that the Government was groping for measures after the failure to oust Col Gaddafi despite five months of Nato attacks.

Col Bob Stewart, a Conservative MP and former UN commander in Bosnia, said that only political or diplomatic efforts could surmount the military failures of the campaign.

He told the BBC: "It may not be diplomatically or politically a stalemate, but on the ground it looks like what I would term a military stalemate."

The announcement that the current chargé d’affaires was going brought a new twist to the long-running controversy over the mission. As far back as 1980 the embassy was in the headlines after the ambassador publicly threatened two dissidents.

It was closed in 1984 after its officials shot Pc Yvonne Fletcher.

It is believed there are eight staff at the bureau. The chargé d’affaires Khaled Benshaban and the other staff will be given a few days to leave the country.

The Foreign Office took the decision after a meeting of the National Security Council on Libya on Monday.

Mr Hague said Britain was unfreezing assets worth £91 million to the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, which is effectively controlled by the NTC. The funds would help it to provide basic supplies of fuel and wages.

Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, had blocked earlier attempts to fund the opposition with frozen funds on the grounds that Britain continued to maintain diplomatic relations with Libya.

The British embassy in Tripoli was shut after the Nato bombing campaign against the regime was launched in mid-March. After the embassy was vandalised in May, Omar Jelban, the Libyan ambassador to the UK was expelled.